Cynthia A. Morgan's Blog, page 103

When Weakness is Strength – #Fantasy #CharacterSketch

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Ayla is one of the lead characters of Dark Fey. She was present in my thoughts from the initial dream that Inspired the story; yet she is very often misunderstood by readers. Although the story could not progress without her, even I find myself frequently annoyed by her overly emotional volatility, so I decided to give my readers a bit of background about her, as well as, perhaps, an explanation.

Born with extraordinary gifts, Ayla can easily distinguish truth from lies. She can look into the eyes and see the soul, Discerning beyond all the complications of guise. Empathy runs so deeply within her that she can even take on the pain of another and she is able to hear thoughts through Telepathic connection. This rare combination of gifts first drew attention to her as a youngling; then isolated her when she was sent off to the Temple, dedicated to a life as a Guardian of Childfey.

There she was guided by scholars who filled her mind with images of good and evil. While her friends sat in cheerful classrooms and played with other childfey, she learned about secret arts and magic. She also learned that using her gifts drains her own energy by an equal proportion to that which she extends to heal or ease anothers suffering. As a result, she tried to learn to protect herself from her own Empathic inclinations, but blocking the thoughts, emotions and pain of others remained a constant challenge for her and when she reached her eighteenth birthday and took her place amidst the communal life of the village of Hwyndarin, this difficulty compeled her to keep others at a distance.

Beautiful, yet socially awkward and frequently overwhelmed by those sentiments and passions of others that she was never able to fully master blocking, she has only one friend, but when this friend introduces her to a young malefey close to her age of eighteen summers Ayla discovers magic of another kind; the enchantment of first love. Even his love, however, cannot alter her feelings of peculiarity and isolation.

Only when she hears the whispers of one who comes in shadows and silence does she begin to understand her own strengths and her own desires. When he steps from the darkness, he throws her world in chaos, requiring her to make decisions she never thought possible; asking her to face dangers she only ever read about, and altering the course of her life forever. Yet, in the process, he helps her to understand the truth about her gifts, which have set her apart for so long.

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***A Snippet from Dark Fey The Reviled ***

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“You are the only person who can help me, Ayla, because you are the only one who can know with absolute certainty what I say is the truth; that I am not deceiving you to serve my own evil purposes.” Gasping in fear, she shook her head, but Gairynzvl would not accept her refusal.

“It is your gift, Ayla, and your purpose.” She stared at him silently as tears slipped over her flushed cheeks, utterly overwhelmed by him.

“Read me, Ayla!” He growled impatiently, but she reached up and shoved him away from her with as much force as she could manage.

“I cannot!” His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“You will not.”

“You are overpowering me!” She snapped back acerbically, “I cannot read through all that emotion.”

He fell silent, considering, but he did not move away and he did not release her from the intense stare he had fixed upon her that pierced into her very essence and made her shudder. After a prolonged moment, he closed his eyes and slowly drew a deep breath; visibly calming himself before he stepped closer and re-affixed her with his resolute gaze. She watched him hesitantly, released from the waves of despondency and resentment he had again opened to her, yet still fearful of what he might do next.

Unhurriedly, he reached out for her hand, patient in a way he had not been before when she started away from him to search his eyes nervously for any indication of reassurance she might find there before offering her small hand to him. Holding it lightly in his warm clasp, he reached out for the other hand, waiting just as patiently for her to understand that he would do nothing atrocious should she give it to him as well. When she did, he drew both to himself, laying her hands upon his chest, palms down over his heart, before releasing his grasp upon her. Spreading his wings wide then, he turned his face upward, closed his eyes, and opened himself to her fully.

Ayla gasped in surprised revelation. She had never done such a thing before; never physically touched someone to read them while they stood, silently surrendered to her, revealing themselves in a manner that was intensely stirring and intimate……

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Discover More About Dark Fey on its official website

The Reviled

Standing In Shadows

Breaking Into The Light

~Morgan~

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Beautiful Original Fairy Artwork by: Ruoxin Zhang

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Beginnings – An Introduction to the #Epic #YA #Fantasy #DarkFey

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The story of Dark Fey is set in a fantasy realm of Jyndari, a world of beauty, magic, Light and Darkness. It is peopled by Feyfolk, winged beings the size of any human who are born with gifts of telepathy, empathy and sometimes magic. It relates how the Power of Hope, Acceptance and Forgiveness can change the world, if you take Positive Action to create Change through doing what is Right.

The only way to achieve Peace is to become Peace.

Although their two realms exist in close proximity, most Fey of the Light have never seen an actual Dark Fey and many Dark Fey only encounter very young Fey of the Light; yet crossings and abductions happen every day.

As their temples are desecrated, homes are pillaged and plundered, and the peaceful tranquility so important to the Fey of the Light is repeatedly shattered, the Fey Guard stand as protectors. They are mighty in battle and fierce in their vigilance to protect the fragile balance of life for the peaceful Fey of Light

All Fey are born with special abilities, or gifts, such as telepathy, empathy, discernment, or the ability to dream walk. Many also have a gift of magic, though not all, such as spell-casting, enchantment, light bending or element wielding. While the Fey of the Light are beautiful and live harmoniously, the Reviled Fey are the opposite; they revere darkness and fill their lives with cruelty and evil, but all Reviled Fey begin their lives as Fey of the Light. The change comes only if they are abducted as childfey and forced to undergo the Integration, a process of intentional neglect and cruelty designed to twist them away from the Light.

This level of horror is not incorporated into the Dark Fey Trilogy simply for the sake of it. One does not need to open the pages of a book to discover the unthinkable, as the darkness typically embodied in fantasy genre stories by some terrifying being or creature is very much alive in our own reality and this is the underlying motivation for the darkness woven into Dark Fey. It was based in great part on the terrifying, yet true-life events of the Lord’s Resistance Army or LRA, a rebel militant group in Uganda that has for over 20 years abducted children from their homes; forcing them to commit horrifying acts of violence against each other and their own people. These children suffer a very real Integration and, like the childfey of Jyndari, they endure violence and cruelty at the hands of truly sadistic overlords. This is how the Reviled came to life and became the horrifyingly cruel beings depicted in Dark Fey.

This story shares the Power of Hope, Acceptance and Forgiveness through the ideal that you can change the world, if you take Positive Action to Create Change through doing what is Right.

Many times during your journey through the Dark Fey Trilogy, you will encounter words that seem to be capitalized for no apparent reason; yet,it should be noted, these capitalizations are anything but random. They mark either proper nouns, such as Fey of the Light, the Temple, Fey Guards, the Reviled, or the Light, which is not simply a glimmering of illumination, but a connotation that is highly important in the spirituality of Fey. If a word holds specific meaning, it may also be capitalized, such as See, Know, or Understand. You may encounter such words when they are in reference to a Fey gift, such as telepathy, empathy, or discernment, and they carry significant weight so, in order to emphasize their importance, capitalization is used.

Join me as we embark into this realm of Light and Dark. Allow your imagination take over as you experience the Jyndari forest and The Fey of the Light’s struggle with The Reviled. Let the Light reach outward from these pages and draws you into on a journey that promises to change your way of thinking.

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Discover More About Dark Fey on its official website

The Reviled

Standing In Shadows

Breaking Into The Light

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~Morgan~

When We Pause…#VisualPoetry

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Before Me…#Meditations on #DailyLife

A wonderful post by a friend about how ineffective worrying truly can be

via Before Me

Thank You

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I wanted to take a moment simply to say Thank You. You are amazing and I truly appreciate YOU more than you may ever realize.

You have made my non-descript little blog far more than I ever could have hoped for, far more than I ever dreamed.

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Thank You for continuing to visit and enjoy what I share.  You are a treasure for which I am thoroughly grateful.

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~Morgan ~

Muse – #VisuallyLyrical #Poetry

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful Photograph found on Pinterest.  Credit Gratefully Acknowledged to the original photographer/Artist.  Thank You~

A Better Place – #Thoughts on #Humanity, #Utopia and #Politics

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I don’t talk politics publicly.  It’s one of those unspoken unspeakable rules…one of the three things you never talk about socially…but every now and then you have to speak your conscience, don’t you?

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil was that good men should do nothing.”- Edmund Burke

I agree.  I also think you can easily add ‘to remain silent’.  If someone was being beaten and you stood by and neither said nor did anything to stop them, you would be as guilty as the aggressor, wouldn’t you?  It’s within the nature of human beings to respond, to react; at least, I still have hope that it is, but I can certainly understand why so many look at the world today and shake their heads with despair.  I do.

We are all unique and have different strengths and individual natures. My nature, as many of yours, leans very strongly toward empathy and compassion.  When a child cries, I immediately need to know if they are all right.  When someone is hungry, I want to give them something to eat.  When an animal is mistreated, my entire spirit weeps in agony.  There are So Many Innocent victims who suffer in silence because they can do nothing else.

But surely we can, can’t we?  I know we are surrounded by violence and hatred and despicable acts I can barely comprehend, but are we not also surrounded by people of a similar nature and spirit as our own?  Are there not just as many longing for some good in this world as there are those who are aggressors and violators? Where does it end?  If we want Peace, do we not need to become Peace? If we long for Love, should we not first Love?

I say all this as a preface because what I really mean to say is that I look at our government and feel such anger. I watch their inaction in monumental proportion and rage against the cold machinery of it all.  I listen to each side trying to prop up their greed and dishonesty with even greater deceptions and avarice while I long for just one good person to stop doing Nothing.

What would it take for ‘one representative of the people’ to say “I refuse to let this continue.”

What might it mean for one to say, ‘If hundreds of thousands of Americans are not being paid because we cannot find a way to practice democracy and come to a compromise, than neither shall I take pay.”

How much good could it possibly do if we stood together as a community, rallying round each other in support of one another, rather than finding offense in everything someone may or may not say or do; rather than faulting them for perceived wrongs or disagreeing with them simply for the sake of feeling stronger, more powerful, bigger?

AH Utopia.  The Dream within the Dream.

Or is it a dream? Why must it be only a dream?  Why can’t it be more?  Why, in this hour of chaos and calamity, can we not stand shoulder to shoulder as a people and Demand Change?

Perhaps because until chaos and calamity hits our own front door, we are free to look away, shake our heads and say whatever we feel like saying against the absurdity of it all.  Perhaps, until one of our very own is affected personally, goes hungry, is denied the basic necessities over an argument that, in reality, is merely a show-piece for posturing and pretense, it is too easy to employ apathy.

If we could feel the pain of a stranger as deeply as we feel the need of a loved one, the world would truly begin to be a better place.  If we want Peace, we need to become Peace. If we long for Love, we first must Love.

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~Morgan~

#Love, #Faith, and #Books Nobody #Reads

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20 years ago I was the manager of a retail music store called The Wall.   While working there, I met a young man who so influenced my life that I actually had a series of posts early on in my BnV career that were inspired by him (The Burning Questions).  He had a particularly intriguing habit of coming into work each day with a specific question. He would pose this question and we would spend the remainder of the day discussing amongst ourselves our thoughts and opinions on the selected topic. Who is the best band of all time? What is the best song ever written?  Do ghosts exist?  Is there a God?  And always, WHY?  They were some of the best conversations I’ve ever had. They must have been, because I still remember.

Fast forward 20 years.  Lives change, tragedies and challenges happen, and Inspiration Leads. This same young man is now a father and husband, pastor of his own church, a relatively new blogger and the author of his first book.  (I say first, because Im certain there will be many).  I shared a post by him just last week called “Youth Sports — Love With A Capital L” and now I’d like to introduce you to him.  So grab a beverage, curl up with a blanket and enjoy …..

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My name is Chad and this is my profile.

These sorts of things always seem vain and self-important, but I can’t figure out why. We wear name tags, introduce ourselves, smile and invite each other to our parties. This is all a very natural overflow of our human need to connect, to see ourselves as part of a bigger story. When I can find a real-life bookstore, I look at the titles, cover art, and excerpts for the same reason: to find somewhere I can belong, someone I can relate to, a hand to hold.

I guess this impulse is why I/we do anything.

I write often and from a pretty specific point of view. That we are loved and accepted by Our Creator – this perspective is the life-line that runs through every word, even if it is never stated. Because you can tell, right? You can tell if someone thinks you are worthy and beautiful. Religion has so often come down on the wrong side of this, showing people we are garbage, we are primarily sinners possessing no real intrinsic value. It’s why I ran from God, Jesus, and spirituality for most of my life. Once I woke up to the fact that this couldn’t have been further from the truth, woke up to the fact that I was loved, here, now, today, what else could I do but spend the rest of my life as a modern-day street preacher? Instead of sandwich boards pointing to a fiery hell, my tools are my heart to open and my arms to wrap around a cold and lonely world who has believed a lie for way too long.

I started the Bridge Faith Community where I teach on Sunday mornings, write on 2 blogs; bridgefaithcommunity.com and lovewithacapitall.com, and now I wrote a book; Chronicles, Nehemiah and Other Books Nobody Reads, that you can get at lulu.com or at my house.

The Bridge blog is very spiritual, mixing my life with Scripture in an attempt to clearly display that God is not somewhere else, that He is here, if only we have eyes to see.

Love With A Capital L is a bit more fun, mixing my life with, well, your life and the art I see/hear/experience and the things that make today explosive and ordinary and painful and overwhelming and totally worthwhile.

These things are the way I express myself, but to be honest, my favorite work of art is my life. I have been given gifts I could never have imagined and been blessed far beyond my wildest dreams. I have 2 of the sweetest boys you have ever met, Samuel and Elisha, and a wife who is truly an Angel. So, I might make it to a million or I might die tomorrow, but I will be thankful for every moment.

Now that it’s finished, maybe it is vain and self-important, but it was pretty fun, too.

Love & Peace.

Chad.

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Here is a chapter of the book:

XXIII. Everyone Needs A Hand To Hold On To

Let’s take this one day at a time, I’ll hold your hand if you hold mine.

Rumors of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, Rise Against

 

If picture’s worth a thousand words then your touch is worth them all.

Dance, Dance Christa Paffgen, Anberlin

 

For the closing prayer, everyone at the Bridge stands and holds another’s hand in each of their own. Now, for some, this introduces an element of dread into an otherwise safe environment. I’ve seen some hurry from their seats into the lobby or their car when they begin to sense the message winding down. For others, this is the perfect end to their morning.

At the Bridge, we give an awful lot of thought to the environment we create. From the color to the art on the walls to the music and placement of the tables and food, the narthex (a super-fancy term for lobby that I just love) is designed for welcoming comfort. The people are engaging and kind, the food is terrific, entering is easy and non-threatening.

However, once the service starts, there is a different aim altogether. The Scriptures invite us into a transformation, a spiritual re-birth, and transformations are never comfortable. Has there ever been a woman, reflecting on childbirth, that would say it was anything other than stressful, arduous, and exhausting? It’s called labor.

Of course, the primary announcement of the Gospel, the Good News, is one of grace, forgiveness, rescue, and life. No matter who you were, what you’ve done, where you’ve been, you can come home. Not only can you come home, but the Creator of the Universe, and the Creator of you, has been waiting for you with the table set. He has never stopped loving you. You do not have to get it together, stop doing whatever, start doing whatever, or climb any kind of ladder of achievement. He loves you and accepts you, exactly as you are, here, now, today.

That IS Good News.

My wife fell in love and married me. That was really good news, too. She accepted me as I was, scars and all. I had many habits and vices, none of which I’ll detail here and none of which were honoring to a woman as lovely as Angel. She loved me anyway in spite of my flaws, the way I was.

There is really only one response to that kind of overwhelming love; to live into those shoes, into that identity. (Obviously, the love of my wife is a laughably poor comparison to the love of Jesus Christ, but sometimes laughably poor comparisons are all we have. The Taylor Swift song ‘Begin Again’ makes me cry because it points me in the direction of my God.) If someone sees you, loves you, speaks a fresh word about you, and you believe it, that can change everything about you, everything about the way you live. All of the things that you settled for before that moment suddenly aren’t good enough. You are a child of the Living God, made in His image, and there is an honor and dignity to that. Some things are beneath you now. You are made to fly, not to crawl in the muck at the bottom of any gross barrel you see.

But leaving old lives behind is hard. Shedding that skin is painful, full of starts and restarts.

Welcome to Church, right?

Welcome to the road.

Welcome to a full capital-L Life.

Ideally, you come inside and you hear you are the beautiful artwork of God, loved beyond reason. And you weep.

Then you realize that you have erected all sorts of walls, carried such heavy baggage, worn thick iron chains around your neck, locked yourself in a prison you have built. You have believed so many lies that this is all you are worth.

And again you weep.

But it’s LOVE that exposes those lies. It’s LOVE that gives you the tools to break those chains, destroy those walls, and demolish that prison. Tearing down the cage you’ve constructed forever is hard, terrifying work, not for the weak.

Or for the unconnected.

We live in a culture that glorifies the individual, the loner, the hero who pulls herself up by the bootstraps. Our culture has minimized actual personal contact until we have days where we don’t see or talk to another human being in person. I have hundreds of friends on social media, some I’ve never actually met. I prefer to text. If my phone rings, I assume it is an emergency. I drive myself if I must leave the house.

But why would I leave the house?

I can order any products I see advertised to live a fulfilled life. I can order my groceries online and  someone leaves a box outside my door. I don’t even have to get dressed. I have new neighbors who I haven’t met.

This is life? This is living?

Is it living to measure my worth based on how many ‘likes’ my latest post garners?

In a word, no. So we hold each others hands as an act of rebellion, opposing the culture that tells us we should worship at the altar of ourselves and our superior abilities. We hold each others’ hands as proclamation that we are, indeed, alive – especially if we have forgotten. Though the road can be long and difficult, it is nothing we have to travel alone.

Do you know what damage it does to a soul that is never touched by another human being? One of the most revolutionary barriers Jesus broke was to touch those who shouldn’t have been and never were touched. In fact, they were called ‘untouchables’ and they were cast out from the rest, regarded as less than human for some reason or another (blood, skin, sin, etc.). Jesus spoke with them, ate with them, and shockingly touched them. As if they were friends or children and not just a disease, history, or reputation. Of course, the healing was physical, superficial, but the true healing took place where the Pharisees could not see, in their hearts.

And that is absolutely worth a bit of uncomfortability.

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Thank you so much Chad for sharing your time, talent and self with BnV.  Im pleased and honoured to share the news about all you are doing and pray only the best blessings…or the most inspiring …ever touch your life.

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~Morgan~

 

Rain- #NaturalWorld #Meditations

Rain.

It is a beautiful thing. There are so many types of rain, really, and I couldn’t tell you which sort I prefer more (unless we are including the fluffy, white, frozen variety that I love most of all, in copious quantities, as frequently as possible.)

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There’s the light, misty kind that I tend to envision whenever someone talks about Great Britain. That type of drizzly, foggy rain that hangs over the landscape, penetrating every crevice, enveloping whatever it touches in a hazy shroud, and leaving ten thousand beads of incandescent diamonds in its wake that sparkle and scintillate when the light reappears. (Sounds divine, doesn’t it?) Oh, it’s also that deceptively inconsequential form of rain that doesn’t look like much until you walk out in it without your brolly.

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There’s the freezing drizzle, or frizzle; that sinister variety of rain that usually arrives overnight and surreptitiously transforms the garden path, car park, or the front steps into a skating arena suitable only for Olympic athleticism. It’s that quirky classification of rain that warps and blurs everything into unrealistic, Photoshop-worthy deviations of reality that makes most of us grab our camera’s (ie. Phones) to record and share the surreal, Dr Suess-iness of it all. This category of precipitation doesn’t initially impress either, so you generally disregard it until you have to go out and then promptly wind up on your…..

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There are many classifications of thunderstorms as well. Those that pop up in the middle of a sweltering, summer day just long enough to make us all run for cover; the kind that create a lot of noise for 20 minutes and then disappear into a haze of steam. There are those that roll overhead in the hiatus of evening, fast and furious, full of sound and fury, (signifying nothing?) that do little more than make a mess, generally. And then there are those magnificent, cacophonous, tempests that jar you from sound sleep in the middle of the night with ear-splitting thunder and shocks of lightening that leave you wondering if you couldn’t hide under the bed with the cat.

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There’s also the awe-inspiring, stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks kind of rain that makes you stare out the window in astonishment, forces you off the road in your car because you can’t see one inch ahead or behind, and makes you wonder for a fleeing, transitory moment if there isn’t an arc being built someplace nearby that you perhaps ought to be booking passage on: those torrential downpours of cats and dogs (and monkeys.)

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Then there’s the steady, pervasive, day-long kind of rain that sweeps over the earth, softly falling hour by hour, never flooding, never rumbling, never wreaking havoc. This is the kind of rain that looks like a painting by Monet or Van Gough; that smells so sweet you inhale the scent of it deeply and can’t help sighing. It’s also that sort of precipitation that makes you want to pull off your shoes like a child, go out and splash in the puddles.

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Much like life, we can’t control the rain; what kind of rain it is, how hard it falls or for how long, but we can control how we respond to it so that we neither wind up soaking wet wishing we had protection from the rain, staring in dumb-struck wonder at the rain fearing what might happen next because the unanticipated variability of the rain caught us completely off guard. Rather, we can stop to enjoy the rain, whatever its form, inhale deeply, and allow ourselves to be refreshed and renewed before we plod on.

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~Morgan~

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Photos 1 and 3 taken by me

#AwardWinning #Epic #Fantasy #DarkFey #Trilogy #Free for a limited time

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Review Rating:

5 stars! Reviewed By K.C. Finn for Readers’ Favorite

The Reviled is a young adult fantasy novel by Cynthia A. Morgan and the first book of the Dark Fey series. There are worlds of light and darkness coexisting alongside one another in this lavish fantasy world, and the story initially focuses on the world of the Light Loving Fey. This domain of fairy kind contains both Ayla and Mardan. Ayla is a guardian whose mission is to soothe the pain of others with her incredible powers, whilst Mardan leads a somewhat solitary life as a Celebrant. As the pair grow closer, however, Ayla senses a darkness growing among The Reviled, creeping in the shadows of her world. Unsure of how much to share with Mardan, Ayla worries for the fate of Jyndari as the darkness approaches.

For fantasy and fey fans, The Reviled has absolutely everything you could want in an epic fantasy adventure. Our two central characters are superbly well developed and engaging to read about, but Cynthia A. Morgan’s expansion of the world around them is what really captivated me. Jyndari is an exotic world with deep detailing and a delicate balance between dark and light. The emotional spectrum of Ayla’s journey is rich and harrowing, taking us into the deepest corners of her incredible mind as she senses the dark fey lurking at every turn. The mystery of what he wants from her is well spun out to an exciting and satisfying conclusion. Overall, I’d highly recommend The Reviled to fans of young adult fantasy and fey stories.